Speaker 1: Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Frieda Carlo
Speaker 1: was an icon for the Chicano civil rights, feminist, and
Speaker 1: lgbt Q movements. Her vehicle was her art, which is
Speaker 1: unusual and very autobiographical. Her paintings revealed her traumatic history
Speaker 1: and ongoing struggle with both physical and emotional pain, as
Speaker 1: well as her inner strength, perseverance, and resilience. My guest
Speaker 1: today is Celia Starr, a professor at the University of
Speaker 1: San Francisco, where she specializes in modern American and contemporary
Speaker 1: art with an emphasis on feminist art and gender studies,
Speaker 1: and she is the author of the new book Frieda
Speaker 1: in America, The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist. Magdalena
Speaker 1: Carmen Frieda Carlo E Calderon was born in July nineteen
Speaker 1: o seven, though she often told other people that she
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen ten, the same year as the
Speaker 1: start of the Mexican Revolution, a movement that Frieda strongly
Speaker 1: identified with. Born in Mexico City to a father from
Speaker 1: Germany and a Mexican mother, they were in a typical
Speaker 1: couple and unusual parents for the time. She was born
Speaker 1: in July of nineteen oh seven, though that doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be what she referred to as her birthdate to
Speaker 1: the world, interestingly, which also has to do with her
Speaker 1: character and her character formation. Her parents were in Mexico
Speaker 1: at the time, but her father's origin is really German
Speaker 1: and her mother was from the area. They were somewhat
Speaker 1: of an unusual couple, somewhat of unusual parents. He was German,
Speaker 1: she was from Mexico. Her mother, Matilde, was born in Oahaka.
Speaker 1: They met actually at a jewelry store. They worked in
Speaker 1: the same jewelry store in Mexico City. It's really after
Speaker 1: her father. His name when he was born as Wilhelm,
Speaker 1: but he changes it when he moved to Mexico and
Speaker 1: he becomes Guillermo. They actually knew each other, but when
Speaker 1: Guillermo's first wife died, he really turned to Matilde and
Speaker 1: her family for support, and then they're close, they get married.
Speaker 1: They really forged this relationship, with Guillermo taking an interest
Speaker 1: in photography and Matilde really encouraging him to seek that
Speaker 1: as a profession, and so he does quite well. He
Speaker 1: becomes a professional photographer. Her family is involved with photography,
Speaker 1: is that right? Her family of origin, Yes, her father
Speaker 1: was a photographer. It was in the family, and she
Speaker 1: was like, yes, this is a good thing to do.
Speaker 1: And it's also really interesting that what you point out
Speaker 1: that when he came to Mexico himself, right, he really
Speaker 1: reinvented himself, including his name, all sort of his likes
Speaker 1: and propensities and so on, and just interesting for people
Speaker 1: to keep in mind in terms of what kind of
Speaker 1: model might Freed have had for reinventing herself, which becomes
Speaker 1: important later in her life exactly. And because he was
Speaker 1: a photographer, he also did portraits, although that was not
Speaker 1: his favorite genre. He typically photographed buildings, but he did
Speaker 1: photograph his wife, Matilda when they were first married. He
Speaker 1: did a lot of photographs of her. He did a
Speaker 1: lot of self portraits, and it does show in both
Speaker 1: of these examples taking on various personas. And so I
Speaker 1: think that definitely influenced Frieda as well, influenced her not
Speaker 1: only in the freedom to take on different personas, but
Speaker 1: also he at times photographed his family and including Frieda
Speaker 1: and she as we'll talk about, I guess in a bit,
Speaker 1: but you know, took on different personas even in these photographs,
Speaker 1: and that was more than acceptable to him. In the
Speaker 1: words another father might have said, why my daughter, are
Speaker 1: you dressing in a suit and looking like a man,
Speaker 1: and I'm not taking that picture. But that did not
Speaker 1: happen at all. He was completely accepting and interested, if anything,
Speaker 1: in photographing her in whatever persona she presented at that time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would even say I think he encouraged it
Speaker 1: because on one of the photographs of Frieda, where she
Speaker 1: is dressed in a man's suit, it says she looks
Speaker 1: like Frieda wrote on there that it was her father's
Speaker 1: suit that she was wearing, so he had to lend
Speaker 1: her the suit. Therefore, I would say he encouraged it, which,
Speaker 1: as you point out, seems pretty highly unusual in this
Speaker 1: context of you know, at this point it's like nineteen
Speaker 1: twenties Mexico. But they are in a suburb of Mexico City,
Speaker 1: so they do have a lot of contact with you know,
Speaker 1: the urban modern society. But nevertheless, yeah, that was highly
Speaker 1: unusual for a father to do. But I will say this,
Speaker 1: when you look at the history of women artists, typically
Speaker 1: what you find is that um, women who were able
Speaker 1: to venture out and become artists and you know, be
Speaker 1: educated and even sometimes forge careers. They almost always have
Speaker 1: a father who is supporting this, and so in that way,
Speaker 1: Frieda is no different. In addition to his supporting ultimately
Speaker 1: her choosing art as a career, he really, as you said,
Speaker 1: he has this. Maybe it's urban liberal, unusual certainly for
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties, but the issue of let's say, sexuality,
Speaker 1: what is acceptable to do, what is acceptable to show,
Speaker 1: what is acceptable to be? He not so much her mother,
Speaker 1: but he has an attitude of acceptance and encouragement. The
Speaker 1: relationship with the mother is somewhat different. It sounds we
Speaker 1: don't know as much about her relationship with her mother,
Speaker 1: particularly early on. I mean, we do have a lot
Speaker 1: of information that comes out in the twenties when she's
Speaker 1: writing letters to her boyfriend at the time, Alejandro. Of course,
Speaker 1: there's this tension that's there because of various factors. But
Speaker 1: I will say this, I think typically in the literature
Speaker 1: we've seen a more of a strained relationship between Freed
Speaker 1: and her mother, and I think that's true overall. However,
Speaker 1: what I found in my research was actually much more
Speaker 1: of a loving, supportive relationship than I ever realized. One
Speaker 1: thing I think that's important for people to understand is
Speaker 1: that when Frieda was really starting out as an artist,
Speaker 1: and we haven't talked yet about, you know, she had
Speaker 1: this terrible accident when she was a teenager, but when
Speaker 1: she is forging her out into sort of taking on
Speaker 1: art for herself, it's her mother who suggests they make
Speaker 1: some kind of an easel for her to have in
Speaker 1: her bed while she's convalescing. And also she suggests putting
Speaker 1: a mirror in the top of her canopy bed so
Speaker 1: that she can look at herself and do self portraits.
Speaker 1: And I think that's really significant that she's right there
Speaker 1: supporting that. And when you look at letters that they
Speaker 1: wrote to each other when Frieda was living in the
Speaker 1: United States in her early twenties and she's writing to
Speaker 1: her mother, a very tender relationship emerges. So I think
Speaker 1: that there was a lot there that was positive as
Speaker 1: well as some of the tensions. At the age of six,
Speaker 1: she contracts polio, which sadly was not that unusual in
Speaker 1: that time period, and relative to how many children did
Speaker 1: she fared reasonably well. But it did affect her leg,
Speaker 1: particularly neurologically, and she had this shorter and more withered
Speaker 1: lower limb, which is something that she always felt or
Speaker 1: subsequently felt I guess uncomfortable about children would tease her
Speaker 1: or bully her about she would think of ways to
Speaker 1: cover it up. And also importantly, she had this unusual
Speaker 1: interaction with the teacher who examined her, already unusual to say,
Speaker 1: you know, you should not basically engage in sports because
Speaker 1: you have this situation with your leg, but I fear not,
Speaker 1: you can basically hang out and spend time with me,
Speaker 1: with some of these other girls who were also spending
Speaker 1: time with me, it sounds as though there was some
Speaker 1: sort of impropriety in terms of perhaps a lesbian relationship
Speaker 1: or I mean, you can't really say a relationship, you'd
Speaker 1: have to say this is a child, you have to
Speaker 1: say a lesbian predatory situation. And Frieda was removed essentially
Speaker 1: from school as a result. Yeah, I think this is
Speaker 1: a very obviously important event that happens in her life
Speaker 1: for many reasons. And it is really complicated, as you're
Speaker 1: pointing out, because on the one hand, this teacher was
Speaker 1: acting inappropriately as far as we can tell. You know, again,
Speaker 1: we don't have all the details. It's hard to know
Speaker 1: exactly what happened from what we do know. She examines
Speaker 1: freedom says, oh, you can't participate in pe. You're not
Speaker 1: physically able to do this, which is seems ridiculous because
Speaker 1: her father had really trained her to be an athlete.
Speaker 1: She was actually quite good at you know pe. But
Speaker 1: the teacher says, no, you can't do this. So right
Speaker 1: away Frieda feels that she singled out. Doesn't like this.
Speaker 1: But then when she starts going to the teacher's room
Speaker 1: instead to help her out, the teacher is really nice
Speaker 1: to her. She has her sit on her lap, and
Speaker 1: Frieda says, as an adult, I fell in love with her,
Speaker 1: and yet this improper relationship is developing with the teacher.
Speaker 1: And apparently there were two other girls who also were
Speaker 1: in a similar situation. I think that has this impact
Speaker 1: on Frieda on the one hand, of having this teacher say, oh,
Speaker 1: you can't do physical activity, but yet come to my
Speaker 1: room and I will have you sit on my lap. I'll,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe caress your shoulders kind of thing. And
Speaker 1: so this interesting duality that happens here. So the objective
Speaker 1: position of excluding her in ways that are painful and
Speaker 1: also insinuate that she doesn't have the resilience that in
Speaker 1: fact she has had, but paired with this seduction, you
Speaker 1: would call it her being very very nurturing, very caretaking,
Speaker 1: and very over involved. And that is interesting inasmuch as
Speaker 1: again later as we will see in terms of the
Speaker 1: conflict for her about you know, to be taken care of,
Speaker 1: is that at odds with being capable and being strong
Speaker 1: and being resilient, and these two sides that seemed to
Speaker 1: be at least early on set up as mutually exclusive
Speaker 1: but obviously something most people would want both and and
Speaker 1: and she clearly strongly wants both. So it's interesting to
Speaker 1: see this early experience that she had sort of setting
Speaker 1: it up somewhat at odds with each other, and also
Speaker 1: of course at being noted to her as something bad
Speaker 1: being done. What the teacher did was wrong, and in
Speaker 1: some ways her participation in it was wrong. But these
Speaker 1: are all formative experiences as she's moving along, and she
Speaker 1: is clearly a very bright girl. That's obvious, right. She
Speaker 1: she was a very good student, but again in the
Speaker 1: more conservative vein that she was with her family following
Speaker 1: originally she thought she wanted to go to medical school.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be a doctor, and she's doing very well.
Speaker 1: She goes to a school that actually has very few girls.
Speaker 1: It is mostly male school. Already an intellectual in in
Speaker 1: terms of really liking to dig into ideas and share
Speaker 1: them with others and debate and discuss, and starts to
Speaker 1: have a romantic life with a boyfriend before she has
Speaker 1: this terrible accident. You don't see at that time in
Speaker 1: her young life, as you often do with other artists,
Speaker 1: a lot of involvement with artistic endeavor. Then she did
Speaker 1: have a lot of encounters with art, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: her main focus. Partly this happens because her father is
Speaker 1: a photographer and she was his assistant. She would go
Speaker 1: out with him when he would photograph buildings, and she
Speaker 1: would a be there to make sure he had epilepsy,
Speaker 1: and so if he had an epileptic seizure, she would
Speaker 1: be there to take care of him, but also to
Speaker 1: watch out that nobody stole his photographic equipment. She also, though,
Speaker 1: was his assistant in the sense that he taught her
Speaker 1: about how to retouch photographs, and so she worked also
Speaker 1: with him. He also did some painting on the weekends
Speaker 1: and also would paint with him, so she had that
Speaker 1: from early on. And then she also you know, had
Speaker 1: studied some art in school. Her father actually got her
Speaker 1: a kind of internship with a printmaker, and you really
Speaker 1: see her having a knack for naturalism, you know, in
Speaker 1: her teen years. So she did have this background in
Speaker 1: art before the accident. Her goal was to go to
Speaker 1: medical school to be a doctor, not to be an artist.
Speaker 1: And was that because that was a reputable thing to
Speaker 1: do or a way to I don't know, make a
Speaker 1: good living, or was it that she had felt a
Speaker 1: drive to the science, to the interest in the science
Speaker 1: of that, or being a helper. Here she has this
Speaker 1: father who in some ways is being kind of an
Speaker 1: artist in certain ways. What does she describe as, you know,
Speaker 1: why a doctor and which obviously didn't work out. But
Speaker 1: what is it that draws her to that? Do we know?
Speaker 1: I don't think we really know explicitly. But she definitely
Speaker 1: was very interested in the body. She was interested in
Speaker 1: how the body worked. There are people who have talked
Speaker 1: about who knew her in her later years when she
Speaker 1: was in and out of hospitals and they were trying
Speaker 1: to help her with her her health. There are assistants
Speaker 1: who say that Frieda understood medicine in a way that
Speaker 1: sometimes it seemed like she knew more than the doctors did,
Speaker 1: so sort of a sublimation of this difficulty that she
Speaker 1: had first with polio and the loss of you know,
Speaker 1: the full function of her leg, and then later this
Speaker 1: terrible accident where you know, she had to be submerged
Speaker 1: in so many ways in medical care. But a father
Speaker 1: who has epilepsy and a mother who it's not clear
Speaker 1: what she had, but it does sound like she often
Speaker 1: felt that she was sickly at least. But then on
Speaker 1: this track of being this great student, she's with this boyfriend,
Speaker 1: Alejandro on this alley bus situation, and and there's a
Speaker 1: terrible accident and she is very badly hurt. She breaks
Speaker 1: multiple bones. Later they discover, in fact, even vertebrae in
Speaker 1: her spine have been moved out of position. But she
Speaker 1: also was impaled by the steel rod in her pelvis,
Speaker 1: which they pull out at the scene, has caused her
Speaker 1: to have a pelvic fracture, but probably also impacted perhaps
Speaker 1: her reproductive organs. This just completely derails her life. At
Speaker 1: that point, she's in a wheel chair, she's bedbound, and
Speaker 1: her mother says, hey, let's put up this mirror and
Speaker 1: get you these paints and set up this easel in
Speaker 1: this way. This is sort of the time when she
Speaker 1: first really involves herself in painting herself. You have to
Speaker 1: imagine that before she's bedridden, she's going to this National
Speaker 1: Preparatory School, which was a very prestigious school in Mexico City.
Speaker 1: It was hard to get into. Freda was one of
Speaker 1: thirty five girls who went there, and the students who
Speaker 1: are going there were seen as up and coming leaders
Speaker 1: of this new Mexican ulture after the revolution. Freda was
Speaker 1: a part of that. She was going to be a doctor,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of her friends were going to
Speaker 1: be lawyers. She was a very active person. She called
Speaker 1: herself a street wanderer. She loved roaming around Mexico City.
Speaker 1: And now she's had this terrible accident and right she's
Speaker 1: in her bed, and it was so difficult for her
Speaker 1: to deal with on so many different levels. But yes,
Speaker 1: she starts creating art because she's what else is she
Speaker 1: going to do? Right she's in bed, she's working on
Speaker 1: walking again. Because one thing that's important to understand too
Speaker 1: is that she was told she would probably never walk again,
Speaker 1: but she was determined that she would walk again. So
Speaker 1: she is working on trying to take small steps to
Speaker 1: walk again, but she's also creating and a number of
Speaker 1: things happen. One is, as she is starting to walk
Speaker 1: again finally and she's working on her art more and more,
Speaker 1: she realizes a couple of things. One is that all
Speaker 1: of her friends have moved on, because she was at
Speaker 1: a point where she was about to graduate from the
Speaker 1: National Preparatory School and she would have gone on to
Speaker 1: medical school. Her friends have gone on, and so what
Speaker 1: is she going to do? And also she wants to
Speaker 1: help her family financially because due to the revolution, her
Speaker 1: father really lost his lucrative job because it was the
Speaker 1: government under Porphyrio Diaz who had hired him. After the revolution,
Speaker 1: he loses that job. They're struggling financially. She wants to
Speaker 1: help her family out financially. This is when right she
Speaker 1: becomes very bold and she decided she's going to go
Speaker 1: see Diego Rivera, one of the most if not the
Speaker 1: most famous artists at that time in Mexico. And she
Speaker 1: shows him, you know her work and says, what do
Speaker 1: you think. I want to know what you think. I
Speaker 1: don't want you to flirt with me. I just want
Speaker 1: you to tell me what you think of my art,
Speaker 1: which was quite a thing to tell Diego Rivera because
Speaker 1: apparently flirted with everybody and it didn't matter what your
Speaker 1: age or your age difference was. He was. He was
Speaker 1: this big womanizer. Had she made him previously, Yes, he
Speaker 1: had come to her school, she had met him, but
Speaker 1: it hadn't been a very exciting interaction. It was just
Speaker 1: sort of there. Well, she used to tease him. So
Speaker 1: when she was going to school, he was paid Antina
Speaker 1: mural at the National Preparatory School, and so she would
Speaker 1: tease him and pull these pranks on him and things.
Speaker 1: But she was just like a schoolgirl, you might say,
Speaker 1: at that point. But now she's coming to him as
Speaker 1: a woman who wants to make a living as an artist,
Speaker 1: so it's a very different kind of context. And he
Speaker 1: gives her a very positive response. He's impressed with her work.
Speaker 1: He sees she has this unique i this unique vision.
Speaker 1: He felt that typically you see in a beginner, certain style,
Speaker 1: certain subjects that maybe are common, but he sees something
Speaker 1: unique in her early work. And yeah, he encourages her
Speaker 1: to keep going, and that was obviously an important turning
Speaker 1: point for her. This seems like a good time for
Speaker 1: a short break. We'll be right back. Frieda had impressed
Speaker 1: a great painter, Diego Rivera, and Diego recognized an intriguing
Speaker 1: creativity in Frieda's paintings. In choosing her subject matter, there's
Speaker 1: this combination of her internal emotional content and a use
Speaker 1: of interesting symbolism, which seems to be again some combination
Speaker 1: of emotionally what's happening inside of her, but also politically.
Speaker 1: She joins the communist group that is there, and she
Speaker 1: developed some very intense political feelings, but it's also culturally
Speaker 1: what's happening, at least in the group that she's choosing
Speaker 1: to be part of. But it really seemed like this
Speaker 1: unique mix that came from inside it is coming out
Speaker 1: of her culture. Frieda was from a culture that really
Speaker 1: understood that there was another reality, one that lives side
Speaker 1: by side with the physical world, an invisible reality, one
Speaker 1: place where we can see. This comes out of a
Speaker 1: lot of mes American cultures, but specifically I talk about
Speaker 1: the Aztecs. They had this concept, certainly of the invisible
Speaker 1: or this spiritual realm. Also, of course Catholicism does, and
Speaker 1: so she grows up in this culture and understands this
Speaker 1: what we might call invisible reality. And I think also
Speaker 1: what I've found in really looking closely at the impact
Speaker 1: of this accident on her at age eighteen, and then
Speaker 1: later a miscarriage that she has in Detroit, and then
Speaker 1: also the death of her mother around that same time,
Speaker 1: in two all of these are incidents that I feel
Speaker 1: take her into this realm of these experiences with death
Speaker 1: on a very powerful level. In two cases, I would
Speaker 1: say near death experiences for her. In the case of
Speaker 1: her mother, of course, it's just experiencing this profound death
Speaker 1: of her mother. And she comes through this, I believe,
Speaker 1: with a new sense of reality. And what does that mean, Well,
Speaker 1: it's a reality again that is connected to the invisible.
Speaker 1: I think she uses that in her artwork. Many of
Speaker 1: her paintings contain these symbols that are to be read,
Speaker 1: decrypted and understood. A lot of her paintings do contain
Speaker 1: references to death or the concern about mortality in the
Speaker 1: living or losses and emotionally you can understand where that
Speaker 1: comes from. But this use of symbols and sort of
Speaker 1: the need to read almost the painting, where does that
Speaker 1: come from? Well, I think it comes probably from different places.
Speaker 1: But two that I think are really important are a Catholicism. Again,
Speaker 1: she went to church probably every Sunday for most of
Speaker 1: her life. Her mother even had a special bench for
Speaker 1: her family at the church in Coyokon where she grew up.
Speaker 1: San Juan Batista. I went to this church and it's powerful.
Speaker 1: It's a really beautiful, powerful church. And some of the
Speaker 1: images that you're looking at, you know, of Christ, for example,
Speaker 1: are very painful to look at, the blood dripping down him,
Speaker 1: the anguish in his face, and I think, you know,
Speaker 1: these were images that were made to be read. And
Speaker 1: then again, I think if we look at as tech art,
Speaker 1: you know, when she's coming of age, she's coming of
Speaker 1: age at the same time that that, in a sense,
Speaker 1: Mexico is coming of age in the nineteen twenties, right
Speaker 1: rediscovering what it means to be Mexican in terms of
Speaker 1: going back to a time prior to the Spanish invasion.
Speaker 1: And so I think just to be able to incorporate
Speaker 1: symbolism into her work and layers into her work was
Speaker 1: probably natural for her, and it was just how her
Speaker 1: mind worked. She is a woman in search of or uncovering.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll say her many potential identities. You're saying that,
Speaker 1: you know, one of them was being very nationalistic. But
Speaker 1: the identity of you know, to be Mexican is also
Speaker 1: to be as tech, and that seemed very important. Another
Speaker 1: identity seemed to be the fluidity of her sexuality, which
Speaker 1: is interesting because obviously that would be somewhat at odds
Speaker 1: with the Catholic Church and its teachings. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: hard to imagine that would have been considered acceptable, nor
Speaker 1: might it have been acceptable to be the third wife
Speaker 1: of an artist who is known to commit repeated infidelity
Speaker 1: during marriage. Anyway, And in fact, her mother seems to
Speaker 1: have not been too thrilled that she chose to marry
Speaker 1: Diego Rivera. No, she was not thrilled. She wouldn't even
Speaker 1: attend the wedding. She wouldn't attend the wedding, which is
Speaker 1: quite a statement. The father came and sounds like he
Speaker 1: was happy that there was a man who would marry
Speaker 1: his daughter and support her. He was a successful artist,
Speaker 1: but the mother felt that he was not a good
Speaker 1: enough man for her daughter, and certainly his morals were
Speaker 1: not consistent with the mother's correct I mean, he's a
Speaker 1: communist he's an atheist. He was like twenty years older.
Speaker 1: She didn't approve it. However, I will say over time
Speaker 1: she did grow to love and appreciate him. I mean,
Speaker 1: she does discuss that in letters later on. She recovers enough.
Speaker 1: She's walking, She's demonstrated an incredible drive and resilience about herself.
Speaker 1: She's painting and marries Diego Rivera. She's painting somewhat, but
Speaker 1: really Diego is the big artist, so to speak. And
Speaker 1: they go to the United States together, and it's really
Speaker 1: in the years there in San Francisco and Detroit and
Speaker 1: her experiences and her exposure to other artists in the
Speaker 1: community and what goes on with her relationship with Diego
Speaker 1: that further shape her artistic expression most definitely. By the
Speaker 1: time she comes to the United States, in n she's
Speaker 1: a novice artist. She's certainly working on her style, but
Speaker 1: she really hasn't developed her own voice yet. So in
Speaker 1: many ways, she was working on this what we might
Speaker 1: call folk art style and wanting to really see herself
Speaker 1: as a painter for the people of Mexico. So when
Speaker 1: she comes to the United States, she's kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: has all these different ideas in her mind. She's trying
Speaker 1: to work through these ideas. We see her development really
Speaker 1: pick up speed. She creates the portrait of Luther Burbank,
Speaker 1: and that's her first I would say, sort of breakthrough
Speaker 1: to a new style while she's in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's a very interesting portrait of this man who was
Speaker 1: a horticulturist who put forward the idea of hybrid fruits
Speaker 1: and vegetables. He was able to create successfully these hybrids,
Speaker 1: and so she makes him a hybrid part tree, part man.
Speaker 1: And then underneath the tree man is his skeleton, because
Speaker 1: he had died a few years before she came to
Speaker 1: the United States. Interestingly, even though Diego is this in
Speaker 1: some ways larger than life man, he is very ambitious
Speaker 1: himself and very charismatic and needed a lot of the
Speaker 1: attention focused on himself. He was nonetheless quite supportive of
Speaker 1: her and her art. He was, I mean, to his credit,
Speaker 1: he was very supportive and he recognized her genius. We
Speaker 1: know that she had relationships with men and women during
Speaker 1: the marriage outside when they were not married, and we
Speaker 1: know that she toyed with the question of gender identity.
Speaker 1: She would want to be photographed in her father's suit
Speaker 1: or she would emphasize more traditionally masculine features and paintings,
Speaker 1: or even in herself in terms of her eyebrows and
Speaker 1: coming together and facial hair. Is there evidence that she
Speaker 1: internally felt gender fluid. I think she felt androgynous. She
Speaker 1: was fascinated by androgyny, saw it as about a balance
Speaker 1: between male and female in some ways. You know, she
Speaker 1: was raised like a boy because the way her father
Speaker 1: treated her was really like the son he never had.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, they did have a son who was born
Speaker 1: a year before Freedom, but he died from pneumonia and
Speaker 1: then of course contracting polio, as we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: brought on her father saying Okay, I'm going to train
Speaker 1: you to box, to wrestle, to swim, so that she
Speaker 1: could build up her strength, but also so she could
Speaker 1: defend herself physically if she needed to from people teasing her. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, she's raised as a boy,
Speaker 1: but at the same time as a girl. And so
Speaker 1: I think in a sense you see that combination of
Speaker 1: the male and female throughout her life, and she seemed
Speaker 1: to really identify as androgynous, and she carries that through
Speaker 1: her art. Often emphasizing the facial hair, the unibrow. My
Speaker 1: sense is that she really saw herself as inderrogynous. She
Speaker 1: had really quite an appetite for the sexual world. She
Speaker 1: appreciated the beauty of feminine things and masculine things and
Speaker 1: vivid and uh and touching, and she just expresses with
Speaker 1: all her senses. And what do we know of Diego's
Speaker 1: acceptance of that? Was he similar to what did he
Speaker 1: like about that? In her? I think he was similar
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. You know. The way that
Speaker 1: he's described also is that even though he's known as
Speaker 1: this womanizer, etcetera very macho, but he also is described
Speaker 1: as very quote unquote feminine, you know when Frieda describes
Speaker 1: him somewhat as a child too, but like, you know,
Speaker 1: having almost like breath, you know, because he was overweight
Speaker 1: and his body was soft, you know, kind of like
Speaker 1: a woman's and a baby's. At the same time, he
Speaker 1: was known to be able to really supposedly like listen
Speaker 1: to women in a way that most men didn't in
Speaker 1: that period. So they both seem to accept each other
Speaker 1: as androgynous in many ways. And I think that that
Speaker 1: was one of the probably the positive aspects of their relationship.
Speaker 1: It's later, actually, even after the period in San Francisco.
Speaker 1: I mean, she she goes to Detroit. She sounds like
Speaker 1: she's very unhappy there. She doesn't feel as in tune
Speaker 1: with the artistic community there. It sounds like she also
Speaker 1: misses being in Mexico quite a bit. It's sort of
Speaker 1: after this period that she paints some of her most
Speaker 1: important paintings. What do we understand comes together there at
Speaker 1: that point that enables her to do that. I guess
Speaker 1: I would first preface this by saying, I think creative
Speaker 1: breakthroughs are mysterious. We can't necessarily know exactly why an
Speaker 1: artist has a creative breakthrough. However, certainly in this case,
Speaker 1: there are these events that are leading up to it.
Speaker 1: Part of it, again is all of the experimentation she's
Speaker 1: done prior to her breakthrough paintings in Detroit. But the
Speaker 1: other part, of course, is that she discovers she's pregnant
Speaker 1: and she's very ambivalent about having this child. One of
Speaker 1: the things I detail in the book is, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of what she's going through, right, She's this ambivalence
Speaker 1: about it. She goes to the doctor and she's thinking
Speaker 1: maybe she should have an abortion, and the doctor has
Speaker 1: her take quinine and castor oil, which I guess at
Speaker 1: that time was something that typically women would try in
Speaker 1: order to have a miscarriage. And so she tries it,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't work, and then she ends up a
Speaker 1: couple of months later hemorrhaging. She's, you know, hemorrhaging at home.
Speaker 1: She's rushed to henry Ford Hospital. You know, it's described
Speaker 1: by Lucian Bloch, who was a friend of hers at
Speaker 1: the time, and her journal and things. As you know,
Speaker 1: this was quite dramatic that she was bleeding so much
Speaker 1: that it made it sound like, you know, if she
Speaker 1: could have perhaps died. Even so, she goes through a
Speaker 1: lot while she's in the hospital. It takes a while
Speaker 1: for the miscarriage. She's bleeding, and then finally she sort
Speaker 1: of expels the fetis and she's distraught. But I think
Speaker 1: it's also important that people understand when a person is
Speaker 1: ambivalent about an event and then something happens to end it.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's actually harder than if you feel
Speaker 1: uniformly one way or the other way, because so in
Speaker 1: this case, you know, she lost the baby, you could say, well,
Speaker 1: she'd come to accept, okay, maybe this is a good thing,
Speaker 1: but it's unlikely that she resolved this ambivalence at all.
Speaker 1: So then what happens is the guilt about whatever part
Speaker 1: of you might have wished for this to happen because
Speaker 1: you felt ambivalent from the get go is usually the
Speaker 1: most difficult emotion to struggle with. To feel responsible in
Speaker 1: some way even though obviously you know you weren't actually responsible.
Speaker 1: That your emotions make you feel like, you know, in
Speaker 1: some way you may have caused this, and you feel terrible.
Speaker 1: So she's in the hospital and then she starts to create.
Speaker 1: She starts doing some drawings in the hospital, and one
Speaker 1: of the drawings really becomes the foundation for one of
Speaker 1: her breakthrough paintings called henry Ford Hospital. So when she
Speaker 1: gets out of the hospital, she's still devastating, I mean,
Speaker 1: she's she's described really as is depressed and irritable, just struggling.
Speaker 1: But she does start to paint again, and when she
Speaker 1: creates henry Ford Hospital, you know, she's showing herself in
Speaker 1: the bed hemorrhaging. And then she has these objects, you know,
Speaker 1: floating above and below her that are attached to these
Speaker 1: red artery like the lines. One of them is her child,
Speaker 1: but she's in this landscape that's barren. She's not in
Speaker 1: a hospital room, she's out in this barren landscape. But
Speaker 1: then in the background you see Henry Ford's river rouge plant,
Speaker 1: and so it's also industry there. It's an amazing painting
Speaker 1: for many reasons. Just first off, the subject itself. It's
Speaker 1: this taboo subject. I don't know of any other artists
Speaker 1: who had depicted themselves having a miscarriage hemorrhage in bed
Speaker 1: like that. People didn't even talk about miscarriages in that
Speaker 1: period for the most part. They wouldn't They wouldn't talk about, well,
Speaker 1: how does it feel, how are you feeling now that
Speaker 1: you had a miscarriage? They just weren't even talking about it, right,
Speaker 1: And so to put it on canvas like that was
Speaker 1: highly unusual. But she's paints it on metal, and so
Speaker 1: she is taking on again the style of the retablo
Speaker 1: from Mexico. She is painting it then in this way
Speaker 1: to make it look like an untrained artist with painted
Speaker 1: but it also has this other worldly quality to it
Speaker 1: as well. Her ability to paint. What it meant really
Speaker 1: to her to be a woman with all of the strengths,
Speaker 1: but all of the difficulties and the tragedies and the terror.
Speaker 1: Her ability to do that actually repeatedly, she's sort of
Speaker 1: gone down in history really as in many ways of
Speaker 1: feminist artist. Even though as you say, she had this
Speaker 1: androgyny about her, she really embraced and investigated and earthed
Speaker 1: and demonstrated what it felt to her, certainly to be
Speaker 1: a woman. I think with Freda, it's personal, but it's
Speaker 1: not just about her personal experiences. It's also personal in
Speaker 1: terms of her culture, always bringing in her culture and
Speaker 1: bringing in these different layers. I think the other thing
Speaker 1: that's important to understand two about freed To taking on
Speaker 1: these taboo subjects is that she was somebody who was
Speaker 1: very honest and blunt in the way she spoke, and
Speaker 1: I think she often incorporated that into her art as well.
Speaker 1: Even you could have layers of symbolism that could be
Speaker 1: you know, uncovered at the same time, you know, just
Speaker 1: sort of putting it out there, like Okay, here I
Speaker 1: am on this bed bleeding something that we don't typically see.
Speaker 1: She's putting it out there because on some level that
Speaker 1: was the kind of person she was. She wasn't afraid
Speaker 1: in many ways to just state what she really felt
Speaker 1: this seems like a good time for a short break.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back. Fleeta's health continued to deteriorate. She
Speaker 1: has suffered pain since her childhood polio and then accident,
Speaker 1: both back pain and leg pain. But now she had
Speaker 1: to have toes amputated, and eventually by she had to
Speaker 1: have her leg amputated due to gang green. After that
Speaker 1: she fell into a deep depression. One of her friends
Speaker 1: said that after the accident, you know, at eighteen, she
Speaker 1: was quite aware of death all the time, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think she said herself, Freeda wrote something
Speaker 1: about death dances, you know, around my bed, something like
Speaker 1: that when she was recovering. So, yeah, she was always
Speaker 1: aware of death. And of course again that's an important
Speaker 1: aspect of Mexican culture, to a celebration of you know,
Speaker 1: life and death. And so her latest paintings after her
Speaker 1: health declines, freed to how how would you describe the
Speaker 1: changes there? The paintings of the nineteen forties definitely start
Speaker 1: to focus more and more out in nature with animals.
Speaker 1: I think she becomes more powerful in a sense. It's
Speaker 1: kind of this duality again though she's powerful, but there's
Speaker 1: often also a look of maybe sadness too in her eyes,
Speaker 1: but her gaze was so powerful in itself that that's
Speaker 1: why I say, you know, when you look at them,
Speaker 1: you're kind of grabbed by her, but you can't sense
Speaker 1: a sadness as well, And then you know, you do
Speaker 1: start to see. In ninety three she does one where
Speaker 1: she says thinking about death, and she's got an image
Speaker 1: of death on her forehead. Then she's got one in
Speaker 1: forty nine called Diego and I with Diego on her forehead,
Speaker 1: And I just feel like when you get to this
Speaker 1: later period, there is more of this emphasis maybe on
Speaker 1: this image of death suffering, like the Broken Column of
Speaker 1: forty four shows her spinal column broken open. There's a
Speaker 1: painting in forty five called Without Hope certainly sounds like
Speaker 1: an sad awareness of impending mortality. It does seem like
Speaker 1: there's more of that in the self portraits. There's sort
Speaker 1: of this open question as to how her life really ended.
Speaker 1: As she was bedridden, she was not doing well, taking
Speaker 1: pain medications and saying that you know, this is sort
Speaker 1: of an unbearable and untenable situation. She gives Diego his
Speaker 1: anniversary gift a month before their anniversary. Her last diary
Speaker 1: entrance sounds like a goodbye. I mean, it's reported that
Speaker 1: she dies in the middle of the night, which wouldn't
Speaker 1: be shocking to anyone given how infirmed she was at
Speaker 1: that point. There seems to be a question as to whether,
Speaker 1: in fact, this was a suicide. Well, of course, it's
Speaker 1: hard to know, right. My sense is that she probably
Speaker 1: was given an overdose of medication to help her so
Speaker 1: she could die peacefully. I mean, there's been speculation that
Speaker 1: even Diego requested it, but again it's hard to know.
Speaker 1: I don't find it hard to believe that somebody, somebody
Speaker 1: could have been free to herself. I suppose gave her
Speaker 1: an overdose, essentially knowing that it could kill her. It
Speaker 1: just sounds like she was probably ready. Like you say,
Speaker 1: in terms of her last entry into her journal, you know,
Speaker 1: she says, I hope the exit is joyful, and I
Speaker 1: hope never to come back. When you look at the
Speaker 1: things that were happening right up to that point, it
Speaker 1: does seem like she's preparing for death, preparing to say goodbye. Right.
Speaker 1: She is clearly in a lot of pain, and all
Speaker 1: the things that they've tried to do for her to
Speaker 1: help her be mobile and recover seemed to not have worked.
Speaker 1: A lot of people say once she had her leg amputated,
Speaker 1: that that was it. She just went downhill, medically downhill.
Speaker 1: But it also sounds like psychologically, psychologically yeah, Unlike some
Speaker 1: great artists. She certainly had success in her lifetime. I mean,
Speaker 1: she was well recognized and admired and had shows and
Speaker 1: had her paintings purchased and purchased by places where artists
Speaker 1: can only hope to have their work shown. But then, sadly,
Speaker 1: actually often the case, after her death and the number
Speaker 1: of paintings is finite, she is even more recognized. But
Speaker 1: it took a while. I mean, it wasn't immediate. Wasn't
Speaker 1: like she died and then suddenly was known as a
Speaker 1: great artist. I think a lot of it comes about
Speaker 1: in the seventies, in particular due to the interest on
Speaker 1: the part of art historians who really start looking at, well,
Speaker 1: where are all the women artists? Are there great women
Speaker 1: artists or are they buried somewhere we just have to
Speaker 1: recover them, or do they just not exist? And so
Speaker 1: you see the beginnings of what we call the feminist
Speaker 1: art movement, and then also art historians really looking at
Speaker 1: the cannon in particular, especially the Western art canon, and
Speaker 1: starting to question this history that we've been told and
Speaker 1: free to Carlo is one of the artists who is
Speaker 1: brought back to the surface and gets looked at more critically.
Speaker 1: And then, of course Hayden Herrera writes this significant biography
Speaker 1: of her. She's working on it in the seventies, it
Speaker 1: comes out in and so there are all these different
Speaker 1: factors that really bring Frieda to the forefront, particularly outside
Speaker 1: of Mexico. Do you think that there's also something about
Speaker 1: the way she lived her life in terms of not
Speaker 1: just overcoming so much difficulty, but her being openly bisexual,
Speaker 1: openly embracing of her androgyny, and her being openly embracing
Speaker 1: of her strong political coal views and weaving those together
Speaker 1: in her art that later made us recognize her as
Speaker 1: such an important female artist. Yes, I think the cliche
Speaker 1: probably fits Frieda, which is that she was ahead of
Speaker 1: her time. Therefore it took a later time period to
Speaker 1: really understand her more fully and to to recognize her
Speaker 1: importance both as a person and as an artist. Also,
Speaker 1: I would add to your list that in terms of
Speaker 1: how she dealt with her disability, the problems that she
Speaker 1: had with walking and and the chronic pain. I mean,
Speaker 1: on one level, she originally in her in her art
Speaker 1: she sort of hides it in some ways, you could
Speaker 1: say she hit it in her way she dressed. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, in her art she becomes very
Speaker 1: open about it too. She shows her wounds, she shows
Speaker 1: her pain again, being very open and honest. And I
Speaker 1: think that's refreshing to people. And I think today we
Speaker 1: live in this culture where people are much more open
Speaker 1: about their personal lives. So she resonates because she was
Speaker 1: always a pretty open and honest person. She was a
Speaker 1: champion of reducing stigma before we acknowledge that stigma was
Speaker 1: a problem. Right. And I want to just add one
Speaker 1: thing that I haven't addressed. Something that I find kind
Speaker 1: of amazing about Freedo Callo, is that in everything that
Speaker 1: I've looked at, you know, read about, you know, things
Speaker 1: that she's written, works that she's created, her attitude towards
Speaker 1: sexuality seems particularly ahead of her time. She seemed to
Speaker 1: love sex with men and women. She says, homosexuality is good,
Speaker 1: you know, it's natural. She just embraced the sexuality as
Speaker 1: a part of life, the great aspects of life. And
Speaker 1: again that's phenomenal considering the time period and the culture
Speaker 1: in which she grew up. In Yes, her demonstration of
Speaker 1: the appetite for life in this non judgmental way is
Speaker 1: undoubtedly something that so unusual for the times, but something
Speaker 1: we can admire and appreciate that perhaps she, in her
Speaker 1: own way moved the needle for people. Part of great art,
Speaker 1: right is how it speaks to the viewer and whether
Speaker 1: it changes, makes change acceptable for the viewer. Certainly we
Speaker 1: would have to put Rita Collo in that place. As
Speaker 1: I say at the end of the book, I think
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why she has risen to the
Speaker 1: top and she's still there is that she was able
Speaker 1: to transform the personal into something universal. Because when you
Speaker 1: look at her popularity, not just as a personality but
Speaker 1: her art, she's always breaking records in terms of attendance,
Speaker 1: and her exhibits are around the world. She crosses cultures
Speaker 1: and obviously time periods, because she's really been on this
Speaker 1: trajectory since the nineties of her you might say star rising,
Speaker 1: and that it speaks to all of us. There's obviously
Speaker 1: something they're fascinating fascinating. Well, that wraps things up for
Speaker 1: this episode. Thanks Cecilia Starr for joining me. Check out
Speaker 1: her book Frieda in America, The Creative Awakening of a
Speaker 1: Great Artist. If you're interested in more information about the
Speaker 1: people we discussed on the show, you can check out
Speaker 1: my book The Power of Different and you can follow
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at doctor Gayale salt or at person
Speaker 1: Ology m D until next time. Personology is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Doctor Gayl
Speaker 1: Saltz and Tyler Clang. The supervising producer is Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1: The Associate producer is Lowell Berlanti. Editing music and mixing
Speaker 1: by Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.